Little Red Lie
by Captain Fantastic
Summary: COMPLETE. I dropped out of college the day my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. I had to; there was no one else to take care of her...A novella about truth, lies, and the wolf at the door.
1. Chapter 1

_"What are we in the hands of the great God?   
It was in vain you set up thorn and briar   
In battle array against the fire   
And treason crackling in your blood;   
For the wild thorns grow tame   
And will do nothing to oppose the flame;   
Your lacerations tell the losing game   
You play against a sickness past your cure.   
How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure?" _

_ -Robert Lowell, "Mr. Edwards and the Spider" _

I dropped out of college the day my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. I had to; there was no one else to take care of her. Mom had died eight years ago. Dad had skipped when I was four. Someone had to make sure she took her medicine on time, and someone had to make sure she remembered to eat. I think she was coming down with Alzheimer's as well, but the doctor wouldn't diagnose her. I think he just didn't want to be responsible for wasting medication on a dying Medicaid patient.

Eventually I had to move her to the hospital, where they could treat her properly. "Properly" meant all sorts of tubes and IVs and bland hospital food. It was too late for me to re-enroll at the university by then. My scholarship had already been given away. My dorm room had been reassigned.

I suppose I could have taken classes at the community college, but I didn't want to. I think I was too ashamed to go to that grotty little school with the drab hallways and the second-rate professors when all of my classmates had moved on to Ivy League schools and top-rated universities. Mrs. Grue, the crabby, rich lady I babysat for, called me prideful. Then she said I was going to hell for the sin and that I should repent while I still had the chance. Then she reminded me to put the babies down at seven.

I should have taken her advice and repented then; it would have saved me from a world of trouble. But I was never one to take advice, especially from snobby rich ladies with penthouses and lapdogs. I had kicked Mrs. Grue's lapdog once. He was barking and biting and he wouldn't shut up, so I kicked him. Maybe I was going to hell.

St. Ardelis hospital was hell, as far as I was concerned, except I hadn't been sent there. Gran had, even though she was the most humble person I knew. On the day that she told me she was dying, she had pretended that it wasn't important. She had smiled and wiped some food off my cheek and said those fateful words with enough cheer to win a football game.

I hated her when she told me. If my pride won't send me to hell, then the way I yelled at her certainly will. I don't know why I thought it was her fault. Maybe I was just mad because she told me on my birthday.

She gave me a coat as a birthday present, right before she spilled the news. It was soft and red and very stylish, right out of a catalogue. I remember thinking of the whistles I would get as I walked through the university's campus. But when she told me the news, all I could think was that I would never get the chance. Maybe that's why I hated her.

I was wearing my red coat on the day the man in the black suit told me that Medicaid wouldn't cover Gran's hospital bills anymore. He gave a ridiculously wordy excuse, but I couldn't pay attention. He was wearing a terrible tie.

The first thought that came to my head as he walked away was that I would have to ask Mrs. Grue for a raise. And then it occurred to me that the hospital bills could never be covered on a babysitting salary. Even if the lady was richer than God.

The second thought that went through my mind was that I had left the lights on in our single-bedroom apartment. I wondered how much the bill would be this month, and I wondered if I could get my housing deposit back from the landlord when I moved out.

I wondered where I would live upon moving out, and whether or not the guy sitting across from me could read the No Smoking Please sign next to his head as he sucked on a cigarette. Maybe he thought "please" meant he didn't have to obey. Or maybe he was too good for courtesy signs. I wondered how I could get to that place in life, smoking a cigarette and not having to heed the rules of common decency. Perhaps I would have to buy a lapdog first.

My head was a jumbled confusion of nothing as I walked back to Gran's room. I kept trying to think of ways to tell her what the man in the suit had said, but I couldn't. Instead I sat down beside her and told her about the weather forecast for Sunday. I think she knew something was wrong, but she never asked.

I just held her hand and talked mindlessly, wondering if the hospital would accept my nice red coat as payment for Gran's medicine this month.

* * *

(A/N : Umm, different pace than my usual writing. Different voice too. I just felt like being contrary. I'll let you guess which fairy tale this novella follows. Shouldn't be too hard. Arranged is in-progress.) 


	2. Chapter 2

_A great Hope fell  
You heard no noise  
The Ruin was within  
Oh cunning wreck that told no tale  
And let no Witness in_

_--"A Great Hope Fell," Emily Dickinson_

My mom had a sister once. I say "once" because the woman disappeared off the face of the planet a long time ago. I think a sister is someone who cares enough to stick around, especially when her niece and mother are about to be tossed out on the street like so much garbage. Her name might have been Margaret. She had a son, but no husband.

She and her kid used to hang around the edges of family functions in an awkward fashion, pretending like they didn't belong. No one ever told them they didn't; I suppose they just liked to think that. I suspected that they lived in Boston, and somehow Gran knew that. Why else would she suddenly decide a year and a half ago to move across three state lines? I don't know why she liked Margaret so much; the woman hadn't shown her face in almost ten years.

Other than an aunt and a cousin that might be skulking somewhere in the city, I didn't have any family but Gran. So when the doctor asked me kindly if I could call someone to pick us up, I just shook my head and grabbed Gran's hand stubbornly to let him know that I wasn't going anywhere. Gran was asleep, otherwise she probably would have cheerfully told the man that we would be out of his hair in ten minutes. She was like that, always stretching herself to make everyone else's problems go away. I liked it when she did it for me—hated it when she did it for someone else.

It was supposed to be me and her against the world. But she kept trying to bring more people into the equation, like Aunt Margaret and her bastard son. Why couldn't she just accept the facts?

I told the doctor that we would be transferring hospitals in two days, if he could just let Gran stay for that much longer. I think he knew I was lying, but he nodded anyway. I didn't like being some old guy's charity case, but it was better than a cardboard box under the bridge.

After the doctor left, I tried desperately to think of a way to fix things. Short of winning the lottery or robbing the bank, I could think of nothing. I hadn't won anything bigger than a Bingo game in my life, and I couldn't do Gran any good if I was in jail. It seemed there was nothing to be done.

Eventually, I came to the realization that there was something to be done. It was a slim hope and it was the last thing I wanted to do, but one look at Gran's pale, shriveled face and I knew I had to try.

I scooped up my purse and coat and walked across the street to the public library. I sat down in front of a computer between two middle-school kids whose pale faces indicated that the last time they had seen something other than a computer screen was probably June of last year. With the help of Google, I found one of those people-finding sites that can stalk anyone with creepy accuracy. For once I was glad that Big Brother had his nose in everyone else's business.

I typed in Margaret Wolfe, Boston, Mass. to see what would happen. There was a page full of Margaret Wolfes, but only one lived in Boston and had one listed relative by the name of Matthew. I remembered that Matthew was the name of the surly-faced kid who glared at me during the family reunions. The website wouldn't give me any more information until I paid money for a membership. The limited membership cost ten bucks. I had twelve left in my bank account.

With a deep sigh and a split-second of hesitation, I typed in my card information and hit Enter. In two seconds I was down to two dollars and an address of one Margaret Wolfe.

It took me an hour to get to the address, because it was across town and I didn't have money for a taxi. After I found the shabby apartment building, it took me twenty minutes to gather up enough grit to go inside and find apartment number 43.

The place smelled of alcohol and baby diapers. A part of me realized that even if Aunt Margaret did live there, she wouldn't be able to help me out very much. Anyone who lived in that dump was only slightly better off than the homeless guy on 2nd Street. But I had come that far, so I couldn't just stop.

I knocked on the door and held my breath. I had a feeling the massively tall, African-American gentleman who answered was not Aunt Margaret. I double-checked the number on the door. It said 43 in cheap, golden plastic lettering—this was the right place.

"Little Vinny?" The guy asked with a raised eyebrow. He must have been expecting someone.

"Do I look like a drug dealer to you?" I snapped irately. It probably wasn't the most polite, or the wisest thing to say, but I was angry that I had just wasted almost all the money I had left on faulty information.

The guy looked insulted and a little confused by the remark. He was probably going to knife me or something. Oh well, I thought darkly. It would be a fitting end to a terrible day.

"I don't suppose a Margaret Wolfe lives here?" I asked pointedly with a sharp sigh.

The guy scratched the back of his head and looked over his shoulder into the dim apartment.

"Hey, Matty? Some girl is looking for a Margaret Wolfe."

"Tell her to try Soft Meadow Cemetery," a voice called back in annoyance.

The guy looked at me with a shrug.

"Is that Matthew Wolfe?" I demanded, trying to catch a glimpse into the apartment. "I'm his cousin, Jane Redding. I have to talk to him."

The doorkeeper relayed the message and a few seconds later I was face to face with my long lost cousin, who looked very upset that I had interrupted whatever he was doing.

"What do you want?" he demanded, like he suspected that I was trying to sell him a vacuum cleaner or something. He had a thick Bostonian accent, like the kind you hear in the movies. I wondered how long he had been living here.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?"

"What do you want?"

"Gran is sick."

"Who?" he glanced over his shoulder, as if he was worried that something was going to explode in his absence.

"Your grandmother," I said hotly. "You know, the mother of your mother? The nice old lady who used to bring us sugar cookies every holiday and--"

"What's wrong with her?" His tone was still sharp, but his expression had relaxed a little.

"She has leukemia. She's dying." It was the first time I had said it out loud. Suddenly, it felt more real.

"What am I supposed to do about it?"

Something in me snapped.

"I don't know, pretend like you care?!" I shouted, and stopped shortly. I couldn't believe I had just yelled at a virtual stranger. The virtual stranger who was my last chance at keeping Gran in the hospital.

Matthew was raising his eyebrow at me.

"Medicaid won't cover her bills," I said, trying again in a calmer voice. "She's about to get tossed out on the street."

"Get a hotel."

"She's dying!" I felt like slapping him upside the head. "How does that not compute with you? She needs the doctors!"

"I don't have any money." Matthew crossed his arms.

"Well, neither do I. She's your grandmother too."

"If you're trying to make me feel guilty, it isn't going to work."

I had known him for two minutes, and I already I was positive that my cousin was the most selfish person on the planet. I heaved a tired sigh.

"Never mind," I muttered.

"Matty! Tonia is on the phone! She's in Brazil!" a female voice inside the apartment shouted.

"Brazil?" Matthew shouted back. "What?!" he spun on his heel and went back into the apartment without a goodbye. The door slammed in my face.

I stood there like an idiot for almost a minute, holding back tears. I don't know why I wanted to cry. I never cried--it was a miserable chore and it never accomplished anything. Mom always said that life was too short to waste on tears. "You'll dehydrate," she'd snapped eleven years ago in her cranky, but still motherly way when I fell off my bike and was wailing about it. "Better to get a band-aid and try again."

A band-aid wouldn't solve any of my current problems.

Almost two hours later I stumbled into the hospital, emotionally and physically exhausted. Gran was still sleeping peacefully. I collapsed in the chair next to her, dropped my face into her blankets and sobbed dry tears, wishing that Mom was there to tell me not to.

* * *

(A/N: Before you start growling at me, the next chapter of Arranged is sitting in my Beta's inbox. Go growl at her. 


	3. Chapter 3

_"Billy Boy stomped through the group of wild-haired ladies and went out the door, but flung back the words, "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"_

_--"Petrified Man," Eudora Welty _

I was sitting in the hospital's cafeteria, chewing on some year-old chicken, when Matthew sat down across from me. I might have been surprised, but I decided to be angry instead—it better suited my mood.

"She's not dead yet," I snapped. "And she doesn't have a penny to her name, so if you're hoping for an inheritance you're out of luck." I was glad that it was the truth. If Gran even had a couple of jelly jars left from paying her medical bills, she'd probably give him one. "Family is important," she would tell me in her cheery, birdlike voice.

I agreed with her, but I didn't define "family" like she did. As far as I was concerned, the jerk sitting across from me was as much my cousin as Sigmund Freud.

"I don't need an inheritance," he said matter-of-factly.

"Good, then go back to your lower-class slum and let me eat." I hoped my words would burn him, but he didn't seem to care.

"You said you needed money." It was a statement of fact, almost an accusation.

I took a sip of water instead of answering.

"What if I told you there was a way you could make some?"

"How much?" I demanded, cutting to the chase. If he was offering me a job as a grocery bagger, then I'd rather deny him straight up and get back to my meal. Minimum wage wouldn't help me now.

"Enough to move your grandmother to a first-rate hospital and to never have to worry about having a roof over your head again."

"She's your grandmother too, you imbecile." I liked the word _imbecile. _It had a seventeenth century ring to it that reminded me of a time when it would be Matthew's social duty to care for Gran, and I wouldn't be expected to do more than roast a hen and embroider something.

"Whatever, are you in?"

"What do you mean, am I in? I'm not selling drugs or anything," I said, a bit too loudly. Some heads turned. Matthew rolled his eyes and leaned forward in a pointedly confidential way.

"I don't sell drugs."

"Are you on drugs?" It wasn't really relevant. I just wanted to know.

"You know what? Never mind." He stood up to leave.

"Wait. Tell me more."

He sat back down quickly enough to make me suspect that he had never really planned on leaving.

"It's not legal," he said quietly. "But no one will get hurt."

"Isn't that what they said before every bank robbery in history? Right before going in and shooting a teller in the face?"

He looked at me strangely.

"There aren't any guns…" he said slowly. I don't think he realized I was being sardonic.

"What is it?" I had stolen gum from a convenience store once, but anything more hardcore than that and I knew I would have to decline. So unless he had a master plan to take fruity gum to the black market, his proposition was going to be denied. I let him continue because I was curious.

"It's a…" he paused to consider. "A con."

I appreciated his straightforwardness.

"Who are you conning?" I was careful not to use a "we." There was no "we" at the moment, and if he was planning on stealing little old ladies' welfare checks then there never would be.

"Rich jerks who can spare the money."

That caught my attention. I thought about the smoker in the lobby, too good for social rules simply because he had hundred dollar shoes and a blackberry. The notion of swiping that blackberry out of his smoke-yellowed fingers was tempting.

"What would I have to do?" A part of me was appalled that I was considering this, but it wasn't like I had any options left.

"That's not something I can tell you until you agree."

The word "yes" flitted through my mind, but vanished immediately under nine layers of conscience and cowardice.

"Sorry, I can't." I shook my head and stood up with my tray. "Why don't you get one of your friends to help you?" He didn't even know me, and I certainly didn't know him.

"They are," he said in annoyance. "It's all planned out, down to the last detail. And then Tonia decided to run off to Brazil with her boyfriend. We need a fourth."

"Not me," I said with a sigh, wishing I could. The thought was exciting and seductive, but I knew deep down that I would never be able to go through with it. Breaking the law was not in my blood. I had cried for a month after I stole that pack of gum. I was critical and cynical and sarcastic, but I wasn't a lawbreaker.

I dumped my tray and walked back to Gran's room. Her doctor was standing outside, lying in wait. I suddenly felt like running away. Instead I walked up to him with all the confidence of someone whose life wasn't quickly swirling down the drain.

"We need her room," he said heavily.

I knew the time would come that even charity would bow to paying patients, but I still wasn't prepared.

"She's s-sick…" I stuttered. Like he didn't already know! He was the same doctor who had given her the diagnosis, who had held her hand and acted like dying was going to be okay.

"So are a lot of people," he said gently. "If you can't pay--"

"What? You'll let her die?" I demanded.

"There are free clinics," he insisted, trying to alleviate the blame. "I'll give you some numbers."

"Great. I'll toss her in a hole full of junkies and hookers where they'll give her expired Aspirin to make everything better." I suddenly hated the man who stood before me. I hated him so very, very much. He stood in front of me in nice black shoes, with a nice silk tie and three-hundred dollar eyeglasses and he was talking to me like free clinics were as nice as the Windsor. As if he had ever seen one. As if he even knew what it was like to not have expensive shoes and ties and to not have a fancy diploma that somehow marked you as leader of the pack and better than the common folk. I hated him.

He said he was sorry and walked away. I imagined him going into his fancy office and scratching "Get rid of charity case" off his To-Do list. Actually, it was probably on a blackberry.

I closed my eyes against the angry, bitter tears and stood outside Gran's door for almost five minutes, just breathing and hating. When I opened my eyes, Matthew was standing in front of me.

"I'm in," I muttered hoarsely through my aching throat, and went to tell Gran that we were leaving.


	4. Chapter 4

_I caught a tremendous fish _

_and held him beside the boat _

_half out of water, with my hook_

_fast in a corner of his mouth._

_He didn't fight._

_He hadn't fought at all._

_--"The Fish," Elizabeth Bishop_

I decided when I walked into the apartment that I had gotten off on the wrong foot with Matthew's friends. I wasn't sure how, since I had just walked in, but I suppose offhandedly accusing his friend Evan of buying drugs had something to do with it. The recently accused just kind of glanced at me and went back to making a sandwich. He was very tall, maybe two heads taller than Matthew, and almost four taller than me. He didn't necessarily look like a drug addict, with pressed khakis and a red polo. He was actually rather nice looking, very clean and upright.

Matthew's friend Georgia was not nice-looking. I think she knew that, from the way she slumped behind her laptop and glared at me through greasy bangs. I tried to smile at her when Matthew introduced us, but she looked like she might spit venom at me if I did. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants and had a crooked pair of two-dollar reading glasses on her head.

"She's too short for Tonia's dress," she complained in a whiny voice.

"Hardly a life or death issue," Evan pointed out, spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread. He had a scholastic accent, the type that comes from an Ivy League education. He was probably in his mid-twenties. I wondered what a well educated young man was doing tangled up in this sort of business.

"Well, I'm not hemming it," Georgia snapped and went back to her laptop, fingers flying across the keys at a ridiculous speed. She looked to be Matthew's age, old enough to be at least a Junior in college, but still too young to be wracking up felony charges.

"Cool it, G." Matthew cleared some paper and takeout boxes off the kitchen table and pointed to a chair. "Sit," he told me.

I sat, feeling out of my element. We had checked Gran into Mercy Hospital across town. It was the Hilton of hospitals, but Matthew promised that by the time the bill came in the mail, we would have more than enough money to pay it. I don't know why I trusted him; maybe it was a lack of better options.

"Ever heard of the Forrest Foundation?" Matthew asked, pulling up a chair across from me. Evan finished making his sandwich and sat down as well. Georgia stubbornly remained in her corner of the couch.

"Do they…save trees?" I asked, by way of saying no.

"No, they raise money for cancer patients. You started the foundation after your boyfriend of six years, Forrest, died from cancer."

"I never had a boyfriend named Forrest." I was pretty sure I'd never started a cancer foundation either.

"You do know what a 'con' is, right?" Evan asked.

"Yes," I defended. "But wouldn't it make more sense to say I have a grandmother with cancer…since it's true?"

"No one cares if some penniless old lady dies," Georgia muttered.

I frowned angrily and was about to pick a fight, but Matthew interrupted.

"She's right, Jane. Our marks are rich people who care about looking like they care, not about actually caring. They're much more likely to be impressed by a young pre-medicine student who came from money and was star of his lacrosse team than some girl's grandma."

"She's your grandmother too!" I said for the nineteenth time that day.

"You just started the foundation last month," he continued, ignoring my comment.

"Forrest's death is still weighing heavily on your heart," Georgia added with fake theatrics, clutching her own heart.

Matthew nodded.

"And you want to keep other people from suffering the loss."

"I never knew I was so selfless," I mumbled.

"The first benefit is in a week. Before then, we have to get the word spread across the city."

"How are we going to do that?" I doubted that passing out flyers door to door was going to catch any rich people's attention.

"The upper-class is like a sandbox," Evan said. "We'll make the popular kid want our toy, and pretty soon everyone else will be wanting it too."

I nodded slowly.

"You understood that?" Georgia demanded of me. Matthew was staring skeptically as well.

"Apparently my metaphors are always too intelligent," Evan explained.

"I was an English major. Metaphors I can handle," I replied, leaving out that I was an English major for a grand three weeks before I had to drop out.

"That's perfect," Matthew said in a decidedly un-sarcastic way. Which was refreshing—when I told my high school counselor about my decision to major in English, he had raised an eyebrow and asked how I was going to speak English for a living. Imbecile.

"Mrs. Woodsman majored in English," Evan expanded for me. "You'll have common ground."

"Who are we talking about again?" I was having a hard time keeping up with their conversation.

"The Woodsman family. Please tell me you've heard of them," Matthew said, almost pleading. I could imagine he was desperate to discover that he hadn't brought a complete idiot onto his team.

"Yes. They're those rich do-gooders who ate breakfast with the president last week." I had seen a few brief news clippings in between dodging the nurse who had Gran's hospital bill.

"The 'Patron Saints of Boston,'" Georgia mocked in a voice that expressed her disapproval of the name the Boston Globe had given the family. "Bunch of filthy rich morons, I say."

"Which will work to our advantage," Evan reminded.

"How is this going to work?" I asked.

"We're going to get them on board for the Forrest Foundation. And you're going to hook them," Matthew answered.

"I'm not a hooker," I said flatly, to dispel any notions.

Evan snorted into his sandwich, Georgia rolled her eyes irritably, and Matthew just raised an eyebrow.

"The Forrest Foundation is the bait," he said slowly, in a voice one might use to teach a kindergartner that glue isn't food. "You're the hook."

"Why couldn't you just say that?"

"You're the one who likes metaphors!" Georgia interjected sourly. I wondered if she even knew how to be pleasant.

"Fine," I muttered. "How am I supposed to hook them?"

"With the kind of bait they can't resist."

I decided I no longer liked metaphors.


	5. Chapter 5

_A conversation begins  
with a lie. and each_

_speaker of the so-called common language feels  
the ice-floe split, the drift apart_

_as if powerless, as if up against  
a force of nature_

_--Adrienne Rich, "Cartographies of Silence"_

The Morrison Building could have easily been a million stories high. How could anyone ever really know? The top of it seemed to vanish into the smog of the upper atmosphere. Who knew how high it really climbed? No one even knew why it was called the Morrison Building. It was owned by Mr. Woodsman. It was where all the workings of his multi-billion dollar empire were based. I wasn't even sure what his empire was comprised of. He seemed to dabble in everything, from real estate to computer engineering. And he had a different company for every venue.

A reporter in the Boston Globe once said that all roads in Chicago led to Andrew Woodsman, Sr.. I think the reporter got a Pulitzer for that article, which recounted all the past goodwill of the Woodsman family. It wasn't shocking; I've heard that Mr. Woodsman ate brunch with several of the Pulitzer committee members every other Tuesday.

When I walked into the Morrison building, the security guard watched me skeptically from the corner of his eye, but didn't make any moves. I had put on my best slacks and shirt for the occasion, along with my red coat, which came down to my knees in a stylish flare. I had even messed with my hair that morning, to be certain that it sat neatly on my shoulders. On this particular Wednesday, I could easily pass for a spoiled yuppie.

When I entered the large and crowded lobby, I immediately saw Matthew sitting on one of the cherry oak benches in the corner. He caught my eye and pulled out his cell phone. I pulled out the one he had given me earlier and answered it before it had a chance to ring.

"Georgia and Evan are on one of the park benches across the street. I'm going to make this a three-way call."

"Okay." I sauntered casually to one of the bulletin boards and pretended to be immersed in the neatly organized contents. Even the boring white flyers were encased in glass. I wondered what exactly the Woodsman family was afraid would happen if they allowed the general public to have access to their bulletin board.

"It's about time." Georgia's voice, slightly fuzzy but still clearly annoyed, came through the speaker. She was always annoyed, it seemed. I had hoped that it would be Evan on the line. He was generally more pleasant to listen to, but compared to Georgia, anyone was.

"Alright, Jane," Matthew said. He was an expert at ignoring Georgia's complaints. "Remember what we talked about last night. Mr. Woodsman will be arriving in a couple of minutes. All you have to do is get on the elevator with him and the rest will be easy."

"Sure," I said with no little sarcasm. "All I have to do is convince him to be so impressed by me, a complete stranger, that he's willing to jump full steam into my heartwrenching little foundation that doesn't really exist."

"I wouldn't suggest wording it like that when you talk to him…" Matthew said.

I think Georgia was snorting in laughter.

"There he is." I could hear Matthew sitting up straighter in anticipation. "He's coming in the doors now."

I turned casually and watched the grey-headed tycoon enter his dominion with a cheerful exuberance as he was immediately accosted by a dozen different employees waving papers and memos for him. I took a deep breath to calm the butterflies in my stomach and fell in behind the crowd.

"You'll have to move closer if you're going to catch the elevator," Matthew warned.

"Don't screw this up," snapped Georgia, even though she couldn't see me. I didn't have to time to tell her she wasn't helping. I held my breath and plunged into the crowd as it neared the row of elevators. All I had to do was squeeze onto the lift, and figure out the rest from there.

I didn't anticipate the mob of employees to be just that—a mob. Three people shoved me rudely and one even elbowed me in the cheek. It might have been an accident, but it hurt like anything. I stumbled and it only took a couple more shoves before I tumbled into an elevator—the wrong one.

I bit my tongue angrily and held my cheek. The cell phone in my hand rang.

"What?" I snapped into the receiver.

"Stay on the elevator. Woodsman's already left," Matthew said, surprisingly calm though I could hear the frustration in his voice. "G, which floor is he headed to?"

"Hold on."

I could hear her fingers flying furiously across her laptop and suddenly it occurred to me that she might actually be in the Morrison Building's computer systems. Was that possible?

"Eighteen," she declared triumphantly. I could hear Evan saying something in the background.

"Got it," I said and hit the button on the wall. It was only after the doors closed that I realized I wasn't alone in the elevator.

The guy in the corner was watching me with a raised eyebrow, through rounded glasses that looked more suited for a dorky little third-grader than a college kid in a dress shirt and tie. The tie was nice though.

"Sorry," I said lightly, lowering the phone a little, but not hanging up. "Which floor were you headed to?"

"Twenty." He nodded towards the panel. The button marked twenty was already lit up. He must have been riding from a lower floor when I stumbled in. "You know eighteen is a security level, right? You can't get off there."

I did a very commendable job of not wincing and glanced nonchalantly at the columns of buttons.

"Oh, I guess I hit the wrong floor by accident." I smacked nineteen with my knuckle as if that had been my intention all along. Then I returned the phone to my ear.

"Yeah, hey, Matthew?"

He was silent on the other end, but I knew he was listening.

"Umm…about that floor at the hospital, I think you told me the wrong one. I..uhh, talked to the receptionist and she said visitors aren't allowed on that level…" I put my hand over the receiver and smiled half-heartedly at the guy so he wouldn't think I was acting suspicious. "My aunt's having a baby."

"Congratulations," he said, looking uncomfortable. Maybe he didn't like talking to random strangers in elevators. Well, neither did I.

It took him a couple seconds, but Matthew caught on.

"Georgia," he said sharply. "Check the security levels."

I think she was already in the process, because two seconds later she replied darkly.

"Yeah, eighteen is off limits to people without security passes."

Matthew cursed sharply.

"Who's in the elevator with you?" he demanded.

"Only one…" I paused to pretend I was listening. "I don't know who." Hopefully my companion wouldn't realize that I was having a conversation about him. Surely not. I thought I was being very discreet. I had seen enough spy flicks to manage at least that much.

"G, check the security feed," Matthew ordered, completely in charge of the situation.

"On it." Several seconds passed. "I've got the feed, but I don't--"

I could hear a brief commotion, as if the phone was being ripped away from her. Evan's voice came on the line.

"Matty, it's Andrew Woodsman's youngest son."

A stunned pause followed.

"Are you sure?" Matthew asked.

"Positive."

"Jane, you've got to talk to him. He's just as good as Mr. Woodsman."

"How? I'm on an elevator," I said. "I'll be off in a few seconds." I lowered the phone and glanced at the Woodsman son. "She's having it now," I explained. "For some reason they think I can teleport to the hospital." I wasn't sure why I was trying to qualify my statements, except that he was watching me out of the corner of his eye and I was paranoid that somehow he knew what was going on.

"We're taking care of it. Keep him talking." I heard Matthew's faint voice before I got the phone back to my ear. Then the line went dead.

"I'm Jane, by the way. Jane Redding," I said, forcing myself to sound cheerful and confident, even though I really just wanted to get off the elevator.

"Simon…" he trailed off before he got to the last name. It took every iota of class I could muster to not burst out laughing. Wasn't Simon one of those singing chipmunks? And wasn't he the nerdy one with the round glasses, exactly like the ones Simon Woodsman was wearing? For some reason, it struck me as hilarious.

"Nice to meet you," I said, instead of giggling. "Do you work here?"

"I was just visiting…" he said softly, trailing off again. He seemed very meek and was pressed into the corner as if any moment now I was going to bare my fangs and try to suck his blood. "What about you?"

I considered him for a few seconds, wondering if he was the type of person to ask for politeness' sake or because he really wanted to know. He seemed genuine, if slightly terrified of the answer. What was his problem?

"I was visiting too. I heard that Mr. Woodsman is a nice guy and I just wanted to chat with him about some issues." And get him to sign away a few million to a fake cancer foundation. Needless to say, I left the last part out.

"What issues?" he asked, and immediately blushed. "Sorry, it's none of my business."

"It's fine," I said reassuringly and went into my woeful tale of my deceased boyfriend and all the rubbish Matthew made me memorize about wanting to spare others from the tragic pain I felt in my heart. I think Simon was actually moved by what I had to say, and I suddenly felt very guilty about the lies coming out of my mouth. Then I thought about Gran, alone on a hospital bed, wasting away, and the guilt dissolved.

The elevator jolted to a stop.

"What's wrong?" I asked, before realizing that this was probably Matthew, Georgia, and Evan, taking care of things. If they thought that I was willing to spend an hour in an elevator with this guy just to chat him up, then they were sorely mistaken. I was already feeling claustrophobic.

"I don't know," he said, actually taking a step from his corner of safety and squinting up at the ceiling, as if it held all the answers. "Maybe we should hit the emergency button."

The elevator jerked back into motion, but it was traveling downward.

"I guess some wires got overloaded or something," I said, as if I knew anything about the inner mechanisms of elevators. Simon just shrugged.

After almost a minute, the doors opened with a friendly ding and the elevator was immediately swarmed by a SWAT team. They dragged Simon a safe distance away and threw me—actually threw me—to the ground. Just like in the movies, except I never thought I could be mistaken for a dangerous criminal.

I felt cold metal click around my wrists and I wriggled on my stomach, trying to catch the breath that had been knocked out of me.

"Stay down!" A voice overhead shouted. "Bomb squad, check her!"

Bomb squad? What the heck?

Someone swiped a metal sensor over me, then patted me down and dug through my pockets.

"Just a cell phone, we're clear."

"What's the matter with you?" I demanded, finally catching my wind. "I'm not a terrorist! Get off me!" I struggled angrily, hoping in the back of my mind that the SWAT team wouldn't utilize a nightstick or a taser to keep me still. I lucked out and they dragged me up by my elbows instead.

"Hey, you made a mistake. Let her go," Simon pushed in between two muscular SWAT members. He looked weak and thin in comparison, but I was glad that someone was standing up for me, since Matthew was probably chuckling in a corner. Jerk.

"We received information that there was a bomber holding you hostage in the elevator." The leader of the team said, looking confused but not about to admit it.

"Are you crazy?" I nearly shouted. "Do I look like a suicide bomber to you?"

The team members just kind of looked at their feet or checked their radios or fiddled with their utility belts, just like ashamed children scolded by a teacher.

"Just uncuff her, please," Simon said, looking pale at his effort to exert authority.

"Sorry about the trouble," the officer said as he took off my cuffs. I was about to tell him that he was most certainly not forgiven when I realized he was talking to Simon. Of course the rich kid gets the apology, not the innocent girl who got flung to the floor like a common thug. Never mind that I wasn't innocent, per se. I hadn't done anything illegal, yet.

As soon as I was free, I jerked away with as much outward annoyance as humanly possible. Too bad he didn't break a bone; I could have gotten rich off a lawsuit.

"I'm so sorry about all this," Simon said, actually looking embarrassed. "My mom's a little nuts about security here. If there's anything we can do…"

I realized then why Matthew had organized the terrorist raid. The Woodsman family would have to hear me out now, or risk a bad public face if the innocent victim of their overzealous security ran to the papers. We had a trump card now.

At that moment, we were swarmed by reporters. I wondered if they just camped outside the building, because they had responded fast. Cameras started flashing and the roar of questions began.

I smiled weakly and started talking into the dozen voice recorders shoved into my face about how I had just come to find support for the Forrest Foundation. I even managed to toss in the line about the tragic pain in my heart. Even as the reporters were eagerly phoning their editors with the next day's headline story, I knew that Matthew was somewhere in a corner, smiling with victorious pride. The Woodsman family had just been hooked.


	6. Chapter 6

"_Everybody in America was supposed to grab whatever he could and hold onto it. Some Americans were very good at grabbing and holding, were fabulously well-to-do. Others couldn't get their hands on doodley-squat."_

_ --Kurt Vonnegut, __Breakfast of Champions_

I was to have tea with the Woodsman family. I figured "tea" was a rich people phrase meaning, "Let's figure out how much it will take to bribe you into keeping quiet." I was more than happy to consider a bribe. After all, only a few thousand would go a long way, considering I currently had nothing. Matthew had warned me against it though.

"We're going for the big fish here," he said. "The whole shebang." His Bostonian accent was really quite amusing to me, but I never bothered to tell him that.

"Why can't we just take their money?" I asked. "It's even legal!"

"Because the Woodsman family won't risk a straight-up bribe. They'll be nice to you, do you favors, but they won't offer hard cash, and that's what we need."

"It just seems a little asinine to go forward with this scheme when something more practical has presented itself."

"Practical, maybe, but not satisfactory. We're going for a million solid."

"Dollars?" I gaped.

"That's just from the Woodsman family. There's no telling how much we'll rack up from the other white-collars."

"You're just being greedy," I accused. "Gran's hospital bill is nowhere near that much."

He looked at me sharply.

"This isn't just about you, Jane," he said hotly. "No one is in this just for the money, I made sure of that."

I looked around the apartment. Georgia was at the table and had her earphones in with music playing loud enough for me to hear it on the couch. Evan had gone for groceries.

"Alright then," I said. "I'm listening."

"Evan got kicked out of law school. He was one year from a degree, he had a job lined up already, and they kicked him out."

"Why?"

"He just couldn't make tuition. The bank wouldn't give any loans because his older brother had racked up some credit card debt in his name a few years back. The rich jerk who ran the school told Evan he was a good kid, but money talked louder than excellence."

"He actually said that to him?"

Matthew nodded.

"What about Georgia?" I look at her. She was immersed in her laptop, with the usual grimace on her features. I couldn't recall her ever smiling.

"She had the skills for a full ride to MIT, but not the test scores. She just can't focus on paper, you know? She ended up with a good job in some lab somewhere, getting paid under the table to work miracles with their computers. Then her snake of a boss stole a program she had just written—her brainchild, her claim to fame. He went to the press and called it his own. But all the work had been done on his computers, so Georgia couldn't prove it was hers. They wouldn't listen anyway; she wasn't even a registered employee. Now that pompous idiot is sitting in some penthouse, rolling in dough from G's creation."

I wished I was more surprised. But that was life, wasn't it? Cruel and ruthless to everyone but a select few.

I suddenly didn't want to take a bribe from the Woodsman family. I wanted to clean them out. Never mind that they weren't directly responsible for any of our woes, this wasn't really about revenge. It was about finally coming out on top.

"Well," I said, standing up with new purpose. "I have a tea party to attend."

"Wear the red coat," he said, settling back on the couch with yesterday's newspaper.

"I thought you didn't like it."

He had told me on the second day of the con that it attracted too much attention and made me stand out in a crowd. We weren't supposed to be memorable.

"You have to impress them," Matthew replied, burying his nose in the day-old news. He glanced once at me over the edge of the paper; the black and white made his green eyes stand out. "Today you need to be unforgettable."

The Woodsman's parlor was bigger than my cousin's apartment and Gran's hospital room combined. I wasn't even aware that houses had parlors anymore, not since the nineteenth century. I felt more than slightly awkward, seated at the polished redwood table and spooning sugar lumps into my tea as if I'd been observing "tea time" my entire life. Mrs. Woodsman sat across from me, chatting mindlessly about various things. Simon was beside her, stiff-backed in his chair and staring at his teacup as if enough concentration would turn it into a rabbit or something. Jennifer, the eldest Woodsman offspring, looked quite comfortable in her chair, sipping tea and watching me with a raised eyebrow. There were two other brothers somewhere or another. I think Mrs. Woodsman said something about Yale. I was too busy gawking at their massive mansion to pay attention.

"So, Jane, I understand that you came to the Morrison Building to speak with my husband," Mrs. Woodsman said, leaning forward. She was aging gracefully, maintaining a gracious air and pretty eyes.

"That's right," I said and took a sip of my tea. It was the most disgusting beverage I had ever tasted. Why couldn't these people serve soda and chips like normal humans? I smiled as if the tea was delicious, but quickly set it down. Matthew would be getting an earful when I returned.

"Well, he's a very busy man, but I'm sure we can arrange a meeting if it's important." I noticed the extra emphasis on "if it's important." She was baiting me. I decided to raise tensions, just because I could, and just because there was no way my cousin would ever know. Matthew had spent almost twenty minutes on a rant about this not being a made-for-t.v. movie, and there wasn't room for witty banter. What I didn't say aloud was that, despite my current college situation, I was an English major at heart—witty banter was an unbreakable habit.

"They told me Mr. Woodsman was busy," I said lightly, with a hint of humor—but not too much. "But I never suspected that I'd get nailed by a SWAT team if I tried to see him."

Jennifer immediately took a sip of tea—to hide a smile I suspect. Simon seemed to sink a full foot lower in his chair. His cheeks were flushed bright red and his glasses were slipping down his nose as he fervently examined his hands. Mrs. Woodsman just looked slightly appalled. I wondered if the terminology "nailed by a SWAT team" was too uncivilized for upper-class society. Or maybe she was just hoping that I had forgotten.

"What a strange turn of events," Mrs. Woodsman finally said with a nervous chuckle. "But these things happen, right?"

Maybe "these things" happen to white-collar citizens with enough money that the police actually cared if there was a threat to their person. Last year, some psycho strapped a few sticks of dynamite to his chest and stood at the door of mine and Gran's apartment building, wailing for his ex-girlfriend to come back to him. We warranted a patrol car with a megaphone, a rent-a-cop from the bank next door, and a meter maid to save the day. One phone call and the Morrison Building gets SWAT and a bomb squad. I could see a double-standard at work in the police department.

Instead of pointing that out, I smiled and agreed with Mrs. Woodsman, and then proceeded to spill the woeful tale of the Forrest Foundation.

Matthew had actually given me a script. It wasn't half bad either.

"Did you write this?" I had asked suspiciously a couple days earlier when he'd handed it to me.

He'd shrugged. "Yeah."

"This is pretty good stuff."

"Well, I'm shooting for the Nobel prize for Literature if this whole criminal thing doesn't work out."

"I'm serious! Where did you go to college?"

"Illinois State, but I dropped out first semester junior year."

"Why?"

"School is for morons."

His accent made "morons" an immensely funny word. I gathered the fortitude to not laugh and pressed onward.

"You should go back—you know, after all this—and finish your degree."

"So I can be a moron?"

A giggle slipped out before I could catch it. I sobered as quickly as possible though.

"College helps you get ahead in life."

"Wrong—college helps some people get ahead in life. College makes me want to shoot myself."

"You're just lazy."

"I have an idea, let's stay focused on the job, and you can quit pretending like you know anything about me." To call his tone scathing would be a vast understatement. I dropped the issue immediately.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one impressed by Matthew's words. By the time I had rolled through the script (with several moments of getting choked up thrown in for flavor), the three members of the Woodsman family seated around me were in a complete, reverent silence. Mrs. Woodsman dabbed her eyes with her napkin.

"You're such a brave girl," she said with a sniffle.

My cheeks flared red at the compliment, and I felt guilt rear its ugly head. These people actually believed me, didn't they? The concept was like an atomic bomb. It was one thing to lie about something this huge. It was another thing to be believed. I had the sudden urge to get up and leave—to drop this whole idiotic scheme and find another way to help Gran. But I couldn't get Georgia and Evan out of my head. I couldn't stop thinking about all the injustice they had suffered for such a petty, monumental thing as money. We had all suffered. It wasn't just about Gran anymore. I had gotten myself entwined into something much bigger. The thought was scary and exciting.

"If you wanted, you could buy some tickets to the charity ball this Saturday." Luckily, the tight uneasiness in my voice could be interpreted as strained sorrow. "It would be a big help."

"Of course!" Mrs. Woodsman cried. "We'd love to help out."

_Anything to help me forget the little SWAT incident,_ thought my cynical side. But my more sympathetic side told me that Mrs. Woodsman was genuine. Geez, she really was the Patron Saint of Boston.

Somehow that truth made this whole endeavor a little harder to swallow.


	7. Chapter 7

_Biff: (turning) Exactly what is it that you want from me?_

_Willy: I want you to know, on the train, in the mountains, in the valleys, wherever you go, that you cut down your life for spite!_

_Biff: No, no._

_Willy: Spite, spite, is the word of your undoing! And when you're down and out, remember what did it. When you're rotting somewhere beside the railroad tracks, remember, and don't you dare blame it on me!_

_--Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller_

"Tonya did _what_?!"

It was Saturday morning, the day of the massively important, utterly crucial, make-or-break-this-whole-gig charity ball. Matthew had just heard some very bad news, and he was not coping as one might hope the fearless mastermind behind a multi-million dollar con would. In fact, he was pretty much freaking out.

"Tonya took the dress with her to Brazil." Evan held his hand over the phone's speaker and looked at Matthew with an eyebrow slightly raised. Georgia was in her usual corner of the couch, slouched behind her laptop with an unmistakable smirk on her face.

"Give me the phone!" Matthew shouted with excess volume, lunging across the kitchen counter.

Evan pulled out of his reach easily and spoke into the phone.

"Tonya? Could you hold on for a few seconds? Matty is having a conniption." He fled the kitchen and rounded the couch as Matthew dove around the counter.

"Give me the phone!" Matthew repeated. "I need to yell at her!"

"Don't you mean _talk_ to her?" Evan asked, keeping the couch between him and his fearless leader.

"No!" Matthew shouted, making another dive for the phone. Evan evaded him once more.

"Chill out, Matty," Georgia ordered, annoyed that the game of keep-away was interrupting her work. "She's your friend."

"Friends don't steal from friends."

"Ugh, you're so dramatic." I rolled my eyes and snatched the phone out of Evan's hand. "Hi, Tonya? Yeah, I'm Jane, you're replacement. Uh-huh…Uh-huh…Uh-huh. Awesome, well good luck." I hung up and tossed the phone onto the couch.

"What did she say?" Matthew demanded.

"She needed the dress for Brazil. She thinks her boyfriend is going to propose."

"Great," Matthew fumed, dropping onto the couch. "Well, while she's off having Sex on the Beach, we're stuck without an evening gown for the ball."

We all stared at him.

"I meant the drink!" he cried exasperatedly.

"Right." Evan shrugged. "Well, Jane is right, you're too dramatic. She can just go buy another dress."

"Oh, a shopping trip, really?" Georgia gushed, extremely sarcastic—even for her.

I rolled my eyes again.

"Just give me the credit card. I'll go buy one. It will take an hour, tops."

"Like I believe that," Matthew muttered, grudgingly handing over the credit card. "You should have let me yell at her."

"That wouldn't have made the dress hop on a flight back to Boston, would it?" Evan pointed out.

"Honestly," Georgia said, exasperated. "Can't you have a nervous breakdown somewhere else, Matty? _Some_ people have to hack into a bank system and set up a fake account."

As an honor student with big plans at a big university, I never thought such a phrase would seem commonplace to me. I seriously needed to sit down and rethink my choice of friends—after we hit the big payday, of course.

I pulled on my red coat and left, glad to be out of the apartment for a while. We had been holed up since I returned from the tea party, double and triple checking plans. Matthew and Evan were both going to be at the actual party, and Georgia would be in a hotel room one floor above, keeping an eye on the cash flow as dozens of wealthy patrons swiped their gold bank cards (no one wrote checks anymore.)

The money would go into what she termed a "ghost" account, and then she would route the cash straight into several offshore accounts. It was all very James Bond.

All I had to do was smile and convince people to support the cause. And wear a very expensive dress while doing so. Before heading downtown, I swung by Gran's hospital. The smell of rich, dying people made me feel a bit dizzy.

Gran looked healthier than usual, no doubt thanks to the expensive treatment she was receiving now that people thought she was rich.

"Jane, sweetie, you look so healthy!" Gran pulled me into a hug. Her arms felt weak and small. I was afraid I would break her if I returned the embrace, so I just patted her back gently.

"Hi, Gran, I just stopped by to say hello. I'm on a lunch break."

"I'm so happy you're back at the university!" she beamed. "I hated thinking you were making any sacrifices for me."

I winced as guilt reared its ugly head. I had almost forgotten the little white lie I'd told her about returning to the university. I just didn't want her to think I was off getting into trouble—like being a part of a highly illegal larceny operation. Surely it wouldn't hurt for her to think I was back in school; she had always wanted me to get a degree—which I was planning on doing when all of this larceny business panned out.

"I don't mind making sacrifices for you," I insisted, truthfully enough.

"Well, I'm glad you're happy," she said with a firm nod. "But this hospital is so nice! It must be expensive. I don't want to be a burden."

"Don't say that, Gran. And I told you, Matthew is chipping in."

Matthew had insisted that I not tell Gran he was around. So, naturally, it was the first thing I did when I settled Gran into the new hospital.

"Who's Matthew, dear?" she asked blithely.

My heart turned a little. At home, she kept the picture of Matthew and his mother on her bedside table, right next to the photo of Mom and me. For as far back as I could remember, she had taken those two pictures into her hands every night and said a prayer for each person in them. I used to watch at her bedroom door, wondering why she loved a daughter and grandson who obviously didn't love her back.

Now she had forgotten she had a grandson. The doctors had confirmed Alzheimer's during her first examination. I had always suspected, but now was when it really hit home.

"No one, Gran. He's no one," I said softly, kissing her cheek. Matthew would be pleased to remain anonymous. God forbid he feel obligated to see his dying grandmother. "I've got class. See you tomorrow."

"Goodbye, sweetie," she said cheerfully.

I couldn't bear to look back and left the room immediately. For the first time since this whole ordeal had begun, I realized that my grandmother was going to die. Sooner or later, no matter how much medicine I paid this ritzy hospital to pump into her bloodstream, she was going to waste away and leave me here with a cousin I barely knew and a boatload of ill-gotten cash.

I stood outside her room for twenty minutes, listening as machines beeped and she talked mindlessly to herself. Finally I left the hospital behind and went downtown, fueled by a purpose that seemed emptier and emptier with every passing moment.

The formal wear boutique reminded me of that dress shop in Pretty Woman, only updated a decade or so. The floors were real wood, and the display cases were devoid of fingerprint smudges from bored toddlers—that automatically made it a fancier boutique than I'd ever walked into.

Erica, a petite clerk with a southern drawl, escorted me immediately to a dressing room and started tossing gown after gown in my direction. For the first time in my life, I didn't even think about price tags. It was freeing.

At some point, Erica had to ditch me for a less patient customer, and I was stuck in front of the ceiling-to-floor mirrors in a gorgeous red gown, trying to decide if it suited me more or less than the blue one on the hanger.

In the mirror, I could see the opposite side of the room where a tailor was jabbing pins into some guy's tux as he tried it on. The guy was watching _me_ in _his_ mirror. Our eyes met. It was Simon Woodsman.

I spun around as if caught in the middle of a criminal act.

"Hi," I said, wondering why in the world I felt so guilty. There was nothing illegal about buying a dress. My hands fiddled nervously with the front of the gown.

To the tailor's dismay, Simon spun around as well. I realized he was blushing more furiously than I was, and I relaxed considerably. I had forgotten how shy he was.

"Hi," he replied haltingly. "I like—you look—the dress, I mean…it's nice." He looked at his shoes.

I felt kind of sorry for him. He was just so…awkward—a college kid who never quite shed the high school cocoon. He was gangly and stood slightly hunched with a perpetual sense of embarrassment. His face was pocked with acne and his round glasses were pushed too far up his nose.

"So I take it you're coming to the charity ball tonight?" I asked, trying to help him along with his stunted conversational skills.

"Of course," he mumbled, glancing up. "We all really admire all the work you're doing with this Foundation. I think my mother wants to adopt you. She wishes I was more…involved." He blushed again and looked out the window.

"Well, you are coming to the best charity event of the year," I said with a smile, semi-easily swallowing the smidgen of guilt his words evoked. "That has to count for something."

"I guess so." He fell silent.

Geez, his awkwardness made _me_ feel awkward. I took one last look in the mirror and decided that this was the perfect dress for the evening. It made me feel like a lying thief hiding behind silk and satin to fool the world—which was exactly right. I changed back into my normal clothes and paid for the gown, suddenly not in the mood for anymore shopping.

While Erica was playing with the malfunctioning computer, I had another encounter with Simon. He was in line behind me, waiting to pay for some very expensive-looking cufflinks.

"Umm…there's a really good coffee place around the corner," he said after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence.

"Cool," I replied, not sure what else to say. I had a pretty good idea of what was coming next, and I didn't necessarily want to encourage it.

"Do you want to grab a quick cup with me?"

"Sure." I don't know why I agreed. Maybe I figured that since I was about to con his family out of a million dollars, I owed him fifteen minutes' worth of conversation over a cup of joe. I left my dress with Erica, and ten minutes later I was sitting across from the richest twenty-year old in the tri-state area, intently stirring the foam in my cappuccino.

"So where do you go to school?" I asked finally, tired of the intense silence. School seemed like a safe subject to approach.

"Harvard. I'm on break right now."

"What are you studying?"

"Biology. I'm pre-med."

Of course he was.

"And do you like the medical field?" I asked, barely keeping the cynicism out of my voice. I'd read enough books and watched enough movies to know what was coming next. He would sigh plaintively and proceed to spill his guts about an overbearing father wanting him to be a doctor and really he would rather go to Alaska and save the polar bears because attending an Ivy League school for free and receiving all the best breaks in life just wasn't what he _wanted_. I felt mildly sick to my stomach.

Simon sighed plaintively, and I blinked to hide the rolling of my eyes.

"Yes, I do," he answered at length. "I just can't wait to get out of school because I have an offer to work in Africa for a few years at a bush clinic, and I think that's really what I want my life's work to be."

I frowned, slightly disconcerted, but still quite cynical.

"You're going to waste eight years of school at Harvard because you want to work in a bush clinic?"

"What do you mean _waste_?" he asked, slightly taken aback. "They _are _human in Africa, you know—just as human as the patients here. Do third world countries not deserve Ivy League doctors?"

I lifted my hands in surrender.

"Chill. I didn't mean it that way. It just surprises me that your parents are willing to pay that much in tuition for you to go work for minimum pay in Africa."

"I'm on scholarship. My parents aren't paying a dime." He was obviously on the defensive.

"Okay. Good for you." I smiled sincerely, and he settled back in his chair slowly. We sipped our cappuccinos in silence for a few moments, but finally I had to pose the question that had been eating at me since we met.

"Do you ever feel guilty?"

"What?" he asked perplexedly, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

"Do you ever feel guilty about having life handed to you on a silver platter? And I'm not trying to be hostile—I'm perfectly serious. Aside from all your academic achievements, you do have it better than the average college student."

He looked thoughtful for a few seconds and then shrugged.

"Sure, I guess I feel guilty sometimes. I see a bum on the street, and I can't help but wonder if he deserves everything I have more than I do."

"So where does that leave the bum?"

He looked uncomfortable under my intense stare, so I gave him a reprieve and glanced at my half-empty cup.

He answered haltingly.

"I guess I've realized over the years that life doesn't always work on the principles of who deserves what. Sometimes we're dealt cards, and we have to play them as best we can. Should I feel bad and quit the game because I have a good hand? I happened to get a royal flush this time, but that doesn't mean that the bum can't take the pot in the end."

I blinked at him.

"Did you just use poker as a metaphor for life?"

"Sorry." He flushed red and glanced down, as if I had caught him stealing from a cookie jar.

I just laughed—a gesture to hide the growing uneasiness in my gut that maybe all my preconceived notions about the rich and well-to-do were just a little bit skewed.


	8. Chapter 8

_Richard bent to kiss an averted face but his son, sinewy, turned and with wet cheeks embraced him and gave him a kiss, on the lips, passionate as a woman's. In his father's ear he moaned one word, the crucial, intelligent word: "_Why_?"_

Why_. It was a whistle of wind in a crack, a knife thrust, a window thrown open on emptiness. The white face was gone, the darkness was featureless. Richard had forgotten why._

_ --_Separating_, John Updike._

The hotel ballroom that Matthew rented out for the evening reached beyond elegant and into the realm of extravagance. I wondered how he managed to find a credit card with a high enough limit and was certainly glad that we wouldn't be paying the bill from our own pockets.

From the moment I arrived, I felt like a queen. The red satin swishing at my ankles and the clicking of my heels on the pristine marble floor spun my head in circles until all I could do was smile stupidly and stare at the richness around me. There are simply no words to describe how wonderful that first hour was. Even as an English student who prides herself on _always_ having plenty of long, literary words, all I can really say is that it was prom night on steroids (minus the last-minute date who can't keep his hands to himself).

After spending a reasonable amount of time meeting and greeting, I talked for a good thirty minutes with Mrs. Woodsman of all people. As an alumnus English major, she was ecstatic to pick my brain about the newest introductions into the curriculum at the university. Granted, I had only experienced the curriculum for three weeks before Gran's diagnosis, but I did my best to remain an intelligent partner in the conversation. I was just relieved to finally speak with someone who knew that 'enjambment' had nothing to do with knives and jelly jars.

I caught glimpses of Matthew and Evan throughout the evening, but we had agreed beforehand not to make contact with each other. Their main purpose was to keep an ear out for any potential problems—like the still (miraculously) unasked question of "Who exactly _is _this girl that we're entrusting our millions to?"

I was secretly relieved that Matthew couldn't approach me. I had left some brochures for universities and scholarships on his bed and wasn't sure how he would react to him. His obvious disdain for the subject of higher education had been made clear enough, but I still wasn't convinced to drop the issue. Every script he handed me further convinced me that he was born to be a writer—and if he refused to do anything about it, then I would push him along. Gran always said I'd gotten more from my mom than her eyes.

For cripes' sake, he had sent a press release to the Boston Globe, and it was printed word-for-word on the second page. I could only imagine what a few years in college would do for his skills. Matthew wasting his life on multi-million dollar fraud schemes was positively criminal—in more than the literal sense.

I was discussing something trivial with a Mr. Morsey or Mortley or Morney when someone tapped my arm politely. It was an elderly gentleman who had a look of quiet urgency about him, so I excused myself from the conversation with Mr. Morsey (Mortley? Morney?), figuring the old man had some questions about the Foundation.

Looking back on it now, I should have guessed he was a cop before he even opened his mouth. There was the fact that he was wearing a black, department store-quality suit instead of a tuxedo. His tie was threadbare and probably plucked from a store shelf circa 1970. There was the way he held my elbow as he led me away from the crowd—not a gentleman escorting a lady, but an officer directing a suspect. All I was missing were the greasy handcuffs he probably had hidden on his person—also circa 1970, no doubt.

"Good evening, miss," he said, pleasantly enough, once we were in a relatively quiet corner of the crowded ball room.

"How can I help you?" I asked, with enough sugar to kill a diabetic. I was just beginning to notice his out-of-place attire, and it was making me nervous.

"I'm Special Agent Robert Hartwell with the Federal Bureau of Investigation white-collar crime division." He spilled the awkwardly long title without so much as a dropped syllable and proceeded to drop open his wallet.

The sight of that brass badge made my heart plummet into my lower intestine.

"I—is something wrong, sir?" I asked, quite breathless and probably very guilty-looking. The notion of five to ten years in prison was nauseating.

"I don't know, Miss Redding. You tell me." He wore a sort of grandfatherly smile on his wrinkled features, only decidedly _not _grandfatherly because no grandfather I'd ever known had the capability to haul me off to a federal penitentiary. Suddenly I wished I was safely back at the hospital with Gran, holding her hand and listening to her babble on about the price of cherries.

"I'm sorry. I'm really not sure what you're talking about," I said weakly, wishing something would blow up so I would have an excuse to leave.

"Yes, you do," he said with a sigh—a disappointed sigh, like a parent whose child just broke the hundred-dollar vase and tried to lie about it. "I was assigned this case because the director wants me to keep busy and out of the way until my retirement in September."

_Case_? We were an official FBI case? Panic bubbled in my throat as Agent Hartwell continued.

"It started as a few odd numbers and strange coincidences—enough to warrant a file, but not a real investigation. If I was still a young and ambitious agent, I would have shoved it in a drawer and demanded a bigger fish. Lucky for you, I'm not. Then I read a rather remarkable press release in the Globe and decided to play a hunch. So here I am."

Lucky me.

"Surely there's nothing here to warrant an FBI investigation," I said meekly, inwardly channeling innocence from such muses as Scout Finch, little Red Riding Hood, and Audrey Hepburn. "And if there is, _I _don't know anything about it." I added a hint of honest terror to my tone as extra evidence to support the guise of youthful innocence.

Gauging his response, I'm not sure if he actually believed me or not, but regardless of my acting skills (or lack thereof), he softened slightly.

"Miss Redding, I'm not here to arrest anybody—and that's because nothing criminal has been committed. Yet."

I let out a very slow breath. Of course he was right. Aside from some barefaced lies to the richest family in Boston and a falsified press release, we hadn't technically done anything wrong—unless intentions counted, because in that case we were all four damned to hell.

"Well, thank you for showing concern," I said carefully, preparing to excuse myself and make a dash for Matthew.

"What's more," he added hurriedly. "After spending some serious time reviewing the background information of the suspects involved—I might, hypothetically, understand why these suspects would be interested in such a serious crime as fraud."

"Really?" I asked, before I could stop myself.

"As an old man with several grandchildren of my own, I might, hypothetically, be inclined to inform you that _should_ such a serious crime be committed here tonight—there would not be enough evidence to even put these suspects under arrest. I'm sure at least one of you has already made sure of that, though." He looked knowingly over my shoulder.

I glanced back casually and saw Matthew at the refreshment table, watching us warily. He had probably spotted Hartwell as a cop the second the man walked in and was waiting to scold me for being daft enough to be drawn into a conversation with him.

I swallowed hard and looked back at Hartwell, trying to decide if the man was being sincere or if this was some sort of elaborate trap. I'd seen Entrapment a couple times in my day.

"Still in the hypothetical," I began slowly. "Why would you be willing to share that information with me?"

"Honestly, little lady, I'm not sure why I came down here tonight. Maybe I just wanted to make sure that you understand your choices."

Make a couple million dollars and get away with it, or walk away and try to start over with several thousand dollars of credit card debt—the choices seemed clear enough to me.

"You can go through with this—far be it from me to question your motives—and start somewhere new with a comfortable future and a dirty little secret, or you can walk out Door Number Two and try again the right way—maybe in a little over your head, but wiser because of it."

I don't know if he was trying to push Door Number Two or not, because it certainly didn't sound appealing to me.

"I know what I'm doing," I said. "Hypothetically."

"I know you do. I just think that maybe you don't know why you're doing it." He heaved a breath and loosened his tie.

"I've seen a lot of white-collar criminals in my day, miss, and I've listened to a lot of them talk. The thing I hear most often is this—their motive, whether revenge or wealth or thrill or family, was always the first thing they lost sight of. And so when it was all over, there was nothing left but a senseless mistake."

I thought about Gran, slowly withering in her hospital room, all alone because I was off playing Matchstick Men with Cousin Matthew. Wasn't this all for her? Then why was she the one left to die alone?

I was left without words as I stared back at Hartwell.

"Like I said, Miss Redding, I'm not sure why I came here." His voice was very soft and tired and warm.

"Maybe this is just an obsolete FBI agent trying to make his last case disappear before it has to be filed in any cabinet. Or maybe it's just a grandfather trying to keep a little girl from losing what she's fighting for. I don't know, but do an old man a favor and don't become one of those numbers in a case-file—one of those white-collar criminals left with nothing but a senseless mistake. Goodnight, miss." He nodded deeply and walked away—a guardian angel disappearing into mist and memory.

Matthew descended upon me several seconds later.

"Was that a cop?" he hissed. "What did he want?"

I stood numbly for a few moments, unable to process the questions.

"Nothing," I murmured finally. "It was nothing." I'd been lying so much in the past few days that this one slipped out without a second thought—and that scared me. What was I doing to myself?

"I've got to go," I said with sudden revelation. "I've got to get out of here."

"_What_?" Matthew demanded, but I wasn't daunted.

"It's over, Matty. I'm done. This isn't what Gran wants—she would never want this. I've been playing the wrong game for the wrong reasons, and I'm done."

"Shut up with your English metaphors already. You can't walk away now. If you aren't here to give the speech, then no one will donate a dime. We're _counting_ on you! Georgia, Evan—what am I supposed to tell them?"

"Tell them to quit while they're ahead," I snapped, pushing past him.

He called after me a few times, but I was lost in my own world as I raced out of the ballroom and through the hotel lobby. A nonsensical part of me felt like Cinderella, fleeing the ball where midnight ticked like an angry bomb. Only, Cinderella had found help in all the right places—fairy godmothers and magic pumpkins. I'd made a deal with a wolf, and like little Red, I'd led him straight to my grandmother's door.

I ran for two blocks like some sort of crazed, party dress-wearing lunatic until I gathered enough sense to hail a cab. Luckily I'd grabbed my coat on the way out and there were a couple of twenties wadded in the pocket in case of emergencies.

I slid into the back of the cab, immediately immersed in the distinct smell of fish and old lady perfume.

"Where you goin'?" the driver asked.

I hugged my red coat to my chest and breathed deeply of fabric softener and daffodils—my grandmother's scent.

"Mercy Hospital," I answered finally. For one strange moment, I sympathized with Cinderella's loss of her glass slipper. I had also left something—someone—behind. It was time I returned.


	9. Chapter 9

_Can we climb this mountain  
I don't know  
Higher now than ever before  
I know we can make it if we take it slow  
Let's take it easy  
Easy now, watch it go_

_We're burning down the highway skyline  
On the back of a hurricane that started turning  
When you were young  
When you were young_

_--"When you were Young," The Killers_

I wandered the corridors of Mercy Hospital like a ghost in the catacombs. The _click click click _of my heels on the tile gave me much different sensations than the similar sound of walking on the marble of the ball room. At the hotel, I had felt on top of the world—if only for an hour. Here, there was something like death hanging in the air. Maybe it wasn't death, but guilt.

Guilt was the reason I wandered aimlessly instead of marching straight to Gran's room. I kept making excuses to myself like the lateness of the hour and the sheer ridiculousness of my attire (nine hundred dollar red satin didn't exactly blend with dime-a-dozen hospital gowns), but I knew deep down that I just didn't want to look her in the eye and admit what I had done—or rather, almost done. I knew she would be disappointed, just as I knew I could never keep this from her.

"Don't let the sun set on your wrath, Jane," she would quote. "You never know what the night will bring."

I figured guilt and wrath occupied the same category in that aspect. Gran would forgive me, but I would never forgive myself if I didn't give her the chance.

It took me almost a half-hour, but I finally gathered the nerve to step into the elevator. There were two others besides me, which filled the small space with that awkward, dense silence that one can only find in an elevator. I fidgeted anxiously, content to stare at my feet for the duration of the ride and try to work up something to say to Gran.

The man beside me lit up a cigarette and exhaled smoke directly onto the No Smoking Please sign. I barely noticed until the little old lady beside him started hacking up a lung as smoke billowed around us. I glared at the man from the corner of my eye, recalling a similar gentleman in the waiting room last week—too good for courtesy signs because his shoes alone cost twice a nurse's paycheck.

"Excuse me," I said with forced politeness over the poor woman's coughing. "That sign says no smoking."

He looked at me sharply, as if unused to people addressing his mistakes—or maybe he was just surprised to hear someone actually speak in an elevator (who isn't?).

I held my breath, waiting for him to say something rude or ignore me altogether.

"Sorry," he said, lowering it from his mouth. Maybe he thought my expensive gown made me someone worth reckoning with, or maybe he was just a decent human being underneath all his overpriced clothes. Either way, he apologized sincerely to the old lady and stepped off when the elevator dinged open.

"Thank you, dear," the old lady said with a birdlike grin.

I smiled back at her, and stepped off as well. Inexplicably, the world suddenly seemed a little bit brighter. Gran's room was just around the corner. I would walk in, give her a hug, explain my long absence, and apologize profusely. She would purse her lips like she always did when I confessed something, but in the end she would give me another hug and tell me I was her favorite (albeit only) granddaughter, and nothing I did would ever change that.

I would hold her hand and tell her about my worries and my problems and my dreams, and she would squeeze my fingers and assure me that everything would turn out beautifully. I had never believed her before, but tonight I would.

When I rounded the corner, Matthew was standing outside my grandmother's door. I looked from his solemn expression to the dark, deathly silent room beyond, and realized suddenly that I would never hold my grandmother's hand again.

"When?" was the only word my brain could form. It came out as a dry, strangled sob.

"Two hours ago." Matthew said quietly.

I shook my head, still trapped within the horrible realization, too stunned to feel anything but mangled confusion.

"Why wouldn't they call--"

He held up my cell phone as an answer before I had finished the question.

"You left it on the kitchen table. I stopped by the apartment to look for you and found it." He was disturbingly unemotional, which was decidedly unlike him. Matthew was always intense or annoyed or plotting or preoccupied. He was never aloof.

A janitor walked by and pushed his cart into the empty room, whistling cheerily under his breath, as if all was right and beautiful in the world.

I don't know why, but that was when the news really hit me. A wave of nausea struck me with enough force that I had to throw a hand against the wall for support. Sick, heaving sobs ripped through my chest and throat.

A piece of me died in that moment, and when my weeping had subsided several minutes later, Matthew only had one thing to say.

"Are you coming back to the charity ball?"

Maybe I said something. I can't remember. I do remember staring blankly at him, mildly horrified that he was truly _that _insensitive.

"Look," he said angrily, as if reading my thoughts. "I'm sorry about your grandmother--"

"She's your grandmother too!" I cried shakily. "What is _wrong _with you?"

"There are almost a hundred potential donors at that hotel, all willing to throw money at us if a certain someone will stand up and give a five minute speech. That's what is _wrong _with me, Jane."

"Gran is gone! And you're worried about money?" I demanded tremblingly.

"Yes, yes I am. If you want to leave your life to ruin, fine—I won't stop you. But _you _aren't the only one involved here. You made a promise to Evan and Georgia when you agreed to help us."

"I can't," I whispered, shaking my head miserably. "Gran wouldn't--"

"She's dead."

I looked up sharply, mouth slightly agape at his bluntness.

"She's dead," Matthew repeated stubbornly. "Now all that's left is _this_. This one chance to come out ahead—and it's not just yours, Jane."

Silence hung between us like an iron curtain. Faintly, the janitor still whistled.

The implications of my indecision washed over me like waves pounding the seashore. Gran _was _dead, and she had left me here with this senseless mistake that Agent Hartwell had warned me about. Only, I hadn't made the mistake yet. It still loomed over me dangerously as I wavered on the precipice of completing this job or running away.

Gran had been my reason for starting the job, and she had been my reason for backing out. She had my reason for everything, for as far back as I could remember. Caring for her was the reason I gave myself for dropping out of the university, for refusing to attend the community college, for not getting a full time job, for a million other things. And now my reason was gone, and I had no idea where I stood.

For the first time in forever, I had to make a decision without underlying motives twisting my morals. I had to decide for myself the right thing to do.

The decision I came to in that moment was arguably the hardest I've ever made in my life.

"I'll go back," I said softly.

Matthew just nodded and grabbed my elbow to lead me back to the elevator.

The taxi ride back to the hotel was excruciatingly long and quiet. I looked firmly out my window the entire time, watching my faint reflection in the glass as tears streamed down my cheeks. For some reason, the cab driver played The Killers the entire ride.

_Everything will be alright. Everything will be alright. Everything will be alright. Everything will be alright…_The words seeped into my head, forming a nepenthe that drew me to the past, before Gran got sick. She used to kneel by her bed every evening and pray out loud. I would listen indifferently from the living room, letting the familiar sound of her voice and the scent of hot cinnamon from her apple pie that still lingered set my mind at perfect ease. Back then, everything _had _been all right.

Now everything was wrong, and even if I managed to set this one thing right—I would never be able to return to those evenings. I would never be able to go back.

When I reentered the ball room, guests stared politely from the corners of their eyes, and it was only then that I realized how terrible I must look. No doubt my entire face was raw, streaked with running mascara, and inset with puffy, red eyes.

Simon Woodsman looked especially worried as he approached me.

"Are you all right?" he asked hesitantly, blushing more than usual—that's when I knew I must look _really _frightening.

"Family problems," I said tightly, glancing at Matthew, who was melting into the crowd.

"Oh…well, ah…I think they're ready for your speech."

"Terrific." I flashed him an empty smile and mounted the steps to the podium with all the poise I could muster.

"Ladies and gentlemen," I began without pausing—to pause would be to second guess myself, and I couldn't afford that. "I know you were expecting a heartwarming speech, but I'm sorry to say that in that aspect I must disappoint you."

The words flowed from my mouth like they were chiseled on my heart, and I couldn't stop even if I wanted to—even though Matthew was staring me down from the back of the room.

"I've got a sad story to tell you instead," I continued as the audience began to stir. "It's pretty miserable, in fact, and I can tell you right now that it's going to make you very angry. That's fine. You have every right to be angry, considering that every single one of you was almost duped by a rather brilliant con that would have robbed you of millions."

A flurry of confusion erupted in the crowd. On the floor to my left, Evan was shooting alarmed glances between me and Matthew. Matthew…well, judging from his expression, if he'd had a gun in his hand, I have no doubt that my speech would have been abruptly cut short.

I took a deep breath and launched into an abbreviated version of the master plan, leaving out names and details. As I finished, all I could do was stare at my hands, which were quivering on the podium before me. There was a lethal silence in the room. I finally gathered the courage to glance up, ignoring the shocked glares of the would-be patrons. Matthew and Evan were gone.

"Why?" a dismembered voice—probably a reporter—cried.

"I'm not going to make excuses," I said quietly, though the microphone brought my voice to the far corners of the room. "Even though there are plenty of those, believe me. The simple truth is that I made a senseless mistake." I looked at Simon, who was staring with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.

"You can hate me for it. I don't really care. I'm not standing here to make you understand. I'm standing here because it's the right thing to do—and that's something I haven't really done for a long time."

The intense quiet continued, so I stepped down from the podium. The crowd parted in stunned silence to let me walk to the exit. I kept my gaze locked firmly on my shoes for the duration of the self-imposed walk of shame, until a hand touched my shoulder. I glanced up to see Simon, still looking slightly bewildered, but he was smiling softly. He didn't say anything, just issued a firm nod and stepped back.

I returned the smile weakly and kept walking. At least one person didn't hate me, though somehow, I never expected him too. My shoulders felt lighter, and inexplicably, I knew I had finally come to myself. I wasn't a thief or a liar, and I'd always known that. I had just forgotten for a little while.

I grabbed my coat and walked into the cool night air, welcoming the chill and the glimpses of starlight with new appreciation. A muffled ringing interrupted my reverie, and I almost jumped out of my skin. I remembered that I'd put my cell phone in my coat pocket and pulled it out.

I figured it was probably Matthew—the thought made me cringe—but I didn't recognize the number.

"Hello?" I answered tentatively.

"Jane Redding?"

"Yes."

"This is Mercy Hospital. I'm calling to inform you that your grandmother, Alice Redding, is in critical condition. It would be best if you came right away."

I felt as if someone had pitched a baseball at my chest.

"My…grandmother?" I sputtered. "There's a mistake. She passed away several hours ago."

I could hear the nurse typing rapidly on a keyboard.

"There's no mistake, Alice Redding was placed in the Intensive Care Unit three hours ago. We've been trying to reach you."

"You left a message?" I asked as realization crept over me.

"Yes."

"Thank you. I'll be right there." I snapped the phone closed and bit my lip to keep from screaming with the sudden anger and relief and frustration that assaulted me.

Matthew had lied to me. He had used my—our—dying grandmother to _manipulate_ me.

I screamed a profanity into the air and flung up my arm to hail a cab. I'd already experienced the death of Gran once that night—if I had to experience it again without telling her goodbye…

I couldn't think straight. I threw myself into the cab and told the driver where to go, vaguely recognizing him as the same driver who took Matthew and I back to the hotel.

The Killers were still playing.

_And sometimes you close your eyes and see the place where you used to live…_

I did just that—listening to Gran's evening prayers and imagining that, if only for a moment, the sweet smell of hot cinnamon still drifted from the kitchen…


	10. Chapter 10

_I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, _

_A pawn and a king.  
I've been up and down and over and out  
And I know one thing:  
Each time I find myself flat on my face,  
I pick myself up and get back in the race._

_ --"That's Life," Frank Sinatra_

My grandmother's hand was as cold as death. The simile carved itself in my brain before I could stop it, and it remained there. Faintly, the air conditioning unit hummed, and the machines that kept my grandmother breathing whined with a hesitant consistency.

She would die soon. I knew this like I knew my own name, and I was strangely calm. All the tears and panic had been used up hours ago. Now there was nothing to do but hold her hand and let her know that I was there—like I should have been doing for the past week, instead of traipsing around with wannabe con artists.

"I'm sorry," I murmured.

Of course she didn't respond. She had enough pain meds coursing through her system to knock out a horse. She would never feel pain again.

I didn't wish the pain on her, but I did wish she were awake. She would squeeze my hand and smile and tell me that everything would be all right, just like that _stupid _Killers' song that I never liked anyway—but now I couldn't get it out of my head, and it was simply ridiculous because Gran was dying, and all I could hear was Brandon Flowers crooning in my head about how _everything will be alright. Everything will be alright. Everything will be alright…_

Looking back on the last few minutes of my grandmother's life, I'm pretty sure that I'd lost my mind. I must have, because when the steady beating of her heart turned into a flat _beeeeeep _and the nurse ran in and the machines were turned off and the sheet was pulled over my grandmother's head, I didn't even shed I tear. I just patted Gran's limp hand one last time, stood up, and left the room, flicking the light off as I went.

It didn't hit me until later that I was three weeks from turning nineteen, alone in Boston, with thousands of dollars in credit card debt and no real friends or family to speak of. If they were smart, Matthew, Evan, and Georgia had skipped the state, maybe even the country. Most of the credit cards were in my name, as I was the only one with decent enough credit for the limits we needed.

If I had truly realized that at the moment, I might have collapsed and never stood up again. But my mind was elsewhere, floating along the passages of time and wondering if I would ever be able to make apple pie like Gran could.

Matthew approached me, looking for all the world like Daniel Ocean from that movie about Vegas, with his black vest unbuttoned, his bowtie loose around his neck, and his cummerbund shoved into his jacket pocket. He clutched a sheath of papers in one hand, which I immediately recognized to be the college brochures that I had put on his bed.

If I'd harbored any hopes about this being a cordial conversation, they were immediately dashed. But then I remembered that he wasn't the only one with reason to be angry.

"You conned me," I said, before he had a chance to speak. That was the first rule I'd been given. Never lie to the team. "I can't believe you would lie about Gran like that, just so I would come back to your stupid—"

"I had to do _something_," he said. "You were losing your head."

"My grandmother was _dying._" I took a deep breath. "Now she's dead. My head is in the right place for the first time since I met you."

"Don't blame me for this," Matthew shot back immediately, waving the brochures at my nose like some kind of weapon. "You knew what you were getting into. You could have backed out sooner. Now we're all ruined."

"It's better than being in jail! Better than spending the rest of our lives with the guilt of it over our heads."

"Speak for yourself, okay? Evan and Georgia and I wanted this. We were willing to take the risks. You have no right presume that you know what's best for us, _especially_ me."

He flung the brochures on the ground between us, and I stared at them. The smiling faces of college students and professors, sitting on green lawns and talking about Whitman, suddenly seemed like a galaxy far, far away.

"Fine," I said hotly. "But you can't blame everything on me either. You shouldn't have lied to me, and you shouldn't have used Gran like you did."

Matthew opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.

"She never forgot about you and your mom. She prayed for you both every night, and only God knows why, since I'm sure neither of you ever did half as much for her."

"What do you _want _from me?" Matthew demanded. "You want me to be the caring grandson, the motivated college student, the thief with the heart of gold—well, I'm not! I'm not even a thief, and we're not living in a fiction novel. This isn't one of those overrated, overanalyzed books that they shove down your throat in English 101, where everything has a rhyme and a reason and a purpose. I'm not a storybook character that you can fit into a mold and write a hundred-word analysis on. I'm just a guy, Jane."

Why couldn't he see that he was a born writer?

"So where do we go from here?" I asked quietly, suddenly too tired to argue anymore. There wasn't really anything to argue about anyway. What was done, was done.

The cell phone in his pocket began to ring, and he answered it shortly.

"We go to the park across the street," he said, slamming the phone shut and turning around. "The others are waiting."

Evan and Georgia were sitting on a wooden bench beneath a streetlight. Georgia was in her typical sweatshirt and jeans, and Evan was wearing a tuxedo like Matthew's, though his had managed to remain orderly. Evan said nothing as we approached. Georgia glared daggers.

We all waited in silence for almost a minute, until Georgia finally spoke.

"Well?"

I realized that they expected me to say something.

"Don't ask me for a reason, because I can't give you one that will satisfy you," I said flatly. "But I'm not giving you an apology either. We made a mistake here, and I think you know that. We're not liars and thieves. We're decent people who got fed up with society, and we got carried away."

"What are you, the Virgin Mary?" Georgia retorted. "We could have gotten away with it."

"Or we could have spent five to ten years stamping license plates—living off the taxpayers' money. Is that how you want to stick it to the rich snobs of the city?"

"We get the point," Evan said softly. It could have been the lack of decent lighting, but he looked like he agreed with me. "What do we do now?"

He looked at Matthew, as did Georgia.

Matthew was the leader of the group, the mastermind and the glue that held us together—the one with all the answers.

"I don't know," Matthew said simply. "We'll think of something. See you back at the apartment."

He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked away. The streetlights illuminated his figure until he was little more than a shadow in the distance. I can't speak for Evan and Georgia, but I think that was the point when I realized that things were going to work out somehow.

I wish I could say that I had a moment of enlightenment, or that the heavens cracked open and bullets of pure philosophy rained from the sky, and I suddenly knew why all this had happened. I wish I had a neat little moral to give, wrapped up in pretty words and sealed with newfound wisdom.

But I didn't, and I don't. All I could think, quite suddenly, was that there was really nowhere to go but up, and that everything had to be all right in the end.

Maybe The Killers had a point after all.


	11. Epilogue

_A note from the author:_

_There have been speculations in the news coverage regarding my recently published work that events in the account are not completely accurate. To this, I'd like to say that since the written account came so far removed (almost fifteen years) from the actual occurrence, that a few errors are unavoidable. I can promise, however, that I put extra care into keeping to the truth. Of course, a couple of names were changed by request, and I obviously cannot claim that every single detail is one-hundred percent accurate. The heart of the tale is true, though—of that you may be certain. Newspaper records regarding the so-called charity ball can be looked up in the archives of the Boston Public Library. You can also read Matthew's press release, which was mentioned in the story, but unfortunately could not be included in its entirety in the published version, due to some conflict with the Boston Globe. _

_There have also been some questions posed regarding the fate of the characters, as my ending apparently left an unpleasant number of loose ends. Though Stuart, my editor, will staunchly deny this—the oversight was mostly due to his pressure on me to finish the story before the year's end. Of course, I write this with the full knowledge that he shall call me tomorrow and remind me of my own eagerness to get this manuscript on the presses. It holds a special place in my heart, as I'm sure you can imagine. _

_The character named Georgia disappeared completely for several years, and though I have yet to reconnect with her, I have heard through reliable sources that she is doing very well for herself in Japan, working for a computer software development company. _

_The gentleman that you know as Evan was awarded a scholarship that enabled him to finish law school. He is now a prominent lawyer in the southeast. I know that the Woodsman family (who obviously kept their true name, as there would be no doubt about their identity anyway) would not want me to mention it, but the aforementioned scholarship was made possible shortly after the charity incident by an anonymous donor. While there has never been any hard evidence in the matter, it is common knowledge that the anonymous funding came from the family in Boston who was best suited (though perhaps least obligated) to make the donation. _

_Simon Woodsman, as I'm sure most of you already know from the media coverage, finished medical school and went on to Africa, as was his dream. His recently founded clinic in Kenya (one of thirty-five across the continent) is making a great difference, and there has been talk of a Nobel Peace Prize nomination…_

_Special Agent Robert Hartwell (name changed to protect the remarkable) retired on schedule to many accolades and honors. He moved to the south shortly after, and I did not hear from him again until after the publishing of my first book, when he sent me a rather heartwarming letter expressing his joy in the matter. We have kept in close touch ever since. _

_Matthew Wolfe never re-enrolled in school, much to my dismay, but managed to overshadow my disappointment (and prove wrong many of my assumptions about those without higher education) with his rather brilliant career on the reporting staff of the Boston Herald. I assure you that I have received the strongest guarantees from his editor that the contents of this work will not jeopardize his job in any way, else I would have never published the book. I get the feeling that Matthew is such an irreplaceable part of the staff that the management staff has no choice but to overlook his past indiscretions. _

_As for me, I flatter myself to think that your curiosity about the above mentioned people extends to my own fate. I spent many years negotiating with banks about the credit card charges, as well as working full-time both as a waitress and a student. (I must point out that both Matthew and Evan helped with the paying of the charges, and though we came close to bankruptcy several times, we managed to pay them off by my last year of college.) _

_I graduated in the top thirty percent of my class with a degree in English. The next years were spent job-hunting (unsuccessfully) and attempting to pay off (also unsuccessfully) my staggering college loans. By the time my first novel was published four years later, I had thirteen dollars in my bank account and was holding down three minimum wage jobs in order to pay rent. When the first novel hit the bestsellers' list, Stuart convinced me to quit two of the jobs and focus on writing my next book. _

_Eight books and a refreshing number of royalty checks later, I decided that it was time to revisit the defining moment of my life. Because no matter how nice my quiet little suburban home is, a part of me still drifts back to that cramped apartment in the city, where four disillusioned wannabe con artists tried to strike back at society. _

_To my faithful readers, I thank you for your constant encouragement, and I hope that this new insight into what has hitherto been a widely undisclosed part of my past will not dissuade your support, but rather strengthen it. I have laid my soul bare on the matter (never mind my tendency to hide behind what the reviewers of Publishers Weekly have referred to as "scathing and often blatantly uncouth sarcasm, as well as a mildly charming penchant for referencing pop culture"). The lessons I learned during the course of the described events have lasted me through my life and only become more pronounced and relevant with my increasing good fortune. _

_And, finding myself with nothing else to say, I shall end this note with warm wishes. _

_--Jane Redding_


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